November 8, 2003	Saturday	Ramazan 12, 1424

CAIRO, Nov 7: Egypt’s security forces used excessive force, including torture in March against demonstrators protesting the US-led invasion of Iraq, said a Human Rights Watch report published on Friday.

The 40-page report, entitled “Security Forces Abuse of Anti-War Demonstrators”, also urged President Hosni Mubarak’s government to launch an independent investigation into the alleged rights violations.

It said the government had allowed the “excessive use of force in dispersing demonstrators and bystanders on March 21 in violation of the right to freedom of assembly; arbitrary arrest and detention, including of children; beating and mistreatments of persons in detention, in some cases amounting to torture”.

The New York-based organization also criticized Egypt for failing to “provide medical care to seriously injured detainees”.

Relating a March 21 demonstration, two days after the US had launched its offensive against Iraq, the report said “uniformed riot police and plainclothes men armed with pipes and clubs assaulted persons (marchers and bystanders) ... beating and injuring many”.

Anti-war protests swept most Arab and Western capitals alike last spring. Demonstrations are effectively prohibited in Egypt, under emergency laws in force since 1981.

Some 800 demonstrators, including at last six children, were nabbed by security officers and often detained in unsuitable places, the report said.

It said some individuals had been arrested later that month and in April for their “known or alleged affiliations with organizations critical of government policies rather than on evidence supporting the criminal charges eventually brought against them”.

The arrests that occurred in the days following the protests were “without judicial warrants, in violation of Egyptian law”, the report added.

Human Rights Watch said it requested meetings with and sent letters of concern to Interior Minister Habib al Adli and General Prosecutor Maher Abdul Wahed, among other top ranking officials, but never received an answer.

Rather, it said, State Information Service head brushed off the organization’s reports of torture as “hearsay ... mere claims made to further the interests of anti-government political factions”.—AFP